In a communications network, a provider of a switch or switching facility is responsible for informing both internal and external parties of any trunk group changes, additions, or deletions. Therefore, it is important to inform a party relating to a particular trunk-group of a modification being made to the respective trunk group. It is also important for a provider of a switch or switching facility to formally inform the party being affected to have adequate time and associated information pertaining to the trunk group being changed.
To better understand the present art, a provider making changes to a switch or switching facility is responsible for informing the interconnected party being affected of any changes made to the current trunk-group. As a communication network continues to grow, it may become necessary for a communication carrier to make modifications or changes to a trunk-group within the switch facility. It is therefore the communication carrier's responsibility to inform the interconnected trunk carrier of any changes being made to determine any down time that an interconnected party may experience during the servicing period of time that occurs when modifications are made to the respective trunk-group circuit.
When a formal report relating to one or more interconnected trunk-group circuits is drafted and submitted to an interconnected party, it becomes a time-consuming process to create a report for tens or a hundreds of trunk-groups. A large amount of time is spent looking up and extracting information used to create the report or “Trunk Group Service Request” (TGSR) for each and every trunk group being modified. In some particular instances, a group of 100 or even a 1000 trunk groups requiring modifications within a particular switch would take days or even weeks to complete one or more reports (TGSR) for all external parties or carriers. This requirement to communicate trunk-group changes with an interconnected party demands a lot of manpower hours, resource time, and money involved in completing a simple report (TGSR) for changing or modifying a particular trunk-group with the interconnected party.
The need exists, therefore, for an improved method that would allow a provider to automate or automatically generate service-request reports for trunk-groups between connected or interconnected trunk groups of one or more carriers. By doing so, a communication carrier will save a vast amount of time, resources, and manpower to perform such a task for each and every switch.